Hannah Alexander - Last Resort

“You’re here, aren’t you? Obviously you need to search for Carissa.”

She nodded, watching the tension in his expression. “You don’t look too chipper,” she noted. “I thought you dealt with this kind of thing before in your pastoral duties.”

“This kind of thing? You’re kidding, right? This is not your normal, everyday counseling session or grief process.” He slid back behind the steering wheel, shifted into Drive and eased forward along the lane.

“Okay, then if these episodes I’m having are connected to Carissa, why can’t I see where she is? Why didn’t I receive some brilliant flash of understanding, some mental map about where to go to find her?”

“Because you aren’t writing the script. God is. He’ll guide you when it’s time.” He glanced at her briefly. “So were there any other impressions a moment ago?”

Noelle gazed at the ceiling of the truck, reluctant to accept that this was even happening. But still…“I felt she was alone in the dark and frightened of some unknown threat.”

“Something? Or someone? Or just the dark itself?”

“Someone.” That much Noelle knew, though it was still a mystery to her how she’d reached that certainty. “But that doesn’t make sense. I can’t believe anyone would kidnap Carissa.”

“Could be revenge. You know Cecil. He has a way of—”

“Making people angry,” she finished for him. “I know. He’s always been quicker to engage his mouth than his brain. But still, only a nutcase would try to take that out on Carissa.”

“Excuse me, but a ‘nutcase’ is exactly who we’re talking about here.”

“Okay. Fine.” Noelle gazed out the window at the bright-red sumac bushes along the edges of the lane, at the red Virginia creeper vines outlining tree limbs, threaded among the canopy of green leaves. “Come to think of it, we sound like a couple of nutcases ourselves. If anyone were to overhear us talking—”

“They won’t. We’ll be careful.”

“Good. So that means you’re not going to go blabbing this to anyone?”

He raised a brow of affected disdain. “You can’t possibly believe I would do something so audacious as to sully my own good name among the locals. My livelihood depends on my reputation.”

She grinned, flooded with relief at this glimpse of her old friend. “Okay, fine. You don’t tell them I’m psychic—”

“You’re not psychic, you’re gifted. They’re two totally different—”

“—and I won’t tell them about the stray marbles you’ve apparently been losing because you believe me. Has Cecil fired someone at the mill or the ranch recently?”

“Not in over six months, and the last man wanted to get fired so he could draw unemployment insurance.”

“No motive for a kidnapping, then. Could Carissa have gotten lost?”

“That’s very possible. Cecil found her flashlight in the mud last night. He’s thinking that she might have gotten turned around and panicked.”

“But Carissa doesn’t panic easily,” Noelle said.

“And besides, you have a definite impression that someone is a threat…”

“I’m not willing to put my faith in some stupid impression,” Noelle said.

“Not stupid,” he insisted. “Let’s not dismiss any possibility.”

Nathan pulled up to the sawmill. The paved parking lot surrounding the huge, barnlike building was crammed with cars, trucks, SUVs and trailers, which had apparently carried all-terrain vehicles.

Ordinarily, Cecil wouldn’t thank anyone for tearing up his pastureland and traumatizing more than a thousand head of cattle and horses, but if the volunteer searchers found his little girl, he would most likely be willing to give them permanent rights to the land—if those rights were his to give. Though he managed all of the Cooper enterprises, he hadn’t yet inherited.

Nathan parked between a van and another truck, then turned to Noelle again. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I told you, I’m fine. A little rattled, but what would you expect? I want to focus on finding Carissa.”

“We’ll do that.”

Noelle stared at the corrugated aluminum siding on the huge building. Even after ten years, the sawmill brought back the memories of the accident that had killed Dad and Grandma and Grandpa. Carissa’s disappearance only resurrected those memories more distinctly.

“We might as well walk from here,” she said. “We’ve got to start looking somewhere.”

They climbed from the truck to be greeted by the music of the crickets and the scent of moist earth. Noelle took a deep breath, her gaze traveling over the mossy green of the cedar trees, the splashes of orange and apricot on the tips of maple trees and the rippling green of the hay field, punctuated by huge, silver-gold bales stacked side by side in the field to the right of the lane.

This lane led around the side of the building to the Cooper settlement about a quarter of a mile away. Noelle’s ancestors had lived and farmed here for generations, expanding this property into a valuable asset that, combined with the successful sawmill, generously supported family members and dozens of employees. As a Cooper family member, Noelle received a sizable check every six months, even though she didn’t work on the property.

Noelle avoided looking at the sawmill, allowing her memories to carry her back to a safer time. She loved country life, especially the privacy and peace of this hollow in the hills. Though she also loved living in Springfield, every time she came home to Hideaway she felt a distinct tug of the heart. She loved the town of Hideaway. Even though she wouldn’t admit it to Nathan, the idea of working at the clinic appealed to something inside her that she thought had dried up and died when she’d lost her last nursing position.

Still, too many memories attacked her here on Cooper land.

“Did anyone search the mill for signs of a possible problem?” she asked. “Maybe a struggle of some kind?”

“They checked, but all they found was the ledger alongside the lane, covered in mud. Carissa obviously had been to the mill and gone, and if there’d been a problem at the mill, she certainly wouldn’t have bothered with the ledger.”

“Could Cecil and Melva have heard a car engine from the house?”

“Not necessarily, but the dogs are usually pretty quick to pick up on the scent or sounds of a stranger, and they never sounded an alarm.”

Noelle reached into the back of Nathan’s truck, where she’d placed water flasks and a backpack with supplies, including a first-aid kit. “Want to hike from here?”

“I’d love to,” he said. “But let me carry the backpack. It looks heavy.”

She strapped herself into her pack. “Think I can’t carry my own load?”

“No,” he said dryly. “I just thought, after all these years, that competitive streak of yours might have mellowed a little.”

“I’m not competitive.” She shifted the shoulder straps. “You should know that by now.”

She gazed along the lane. She wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone in her family right now, especially since no one had called her about Carissa. Still, the lane was the quickest and safest route into the rest of the hollow, with connecting lanes and cattle trails beyond Cecil’s place. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and make it past the houses without anyone noticing us,” she said as they set off.

Nathan sniffed the tealike scent of early autumn leaves and listened to the crickets chirping from the forest on either side of the lane. Cedar Hollow—two thousand acres of fertile farm valley settled deep in the tree-lined hills—had changed little since he’d grown up here. His family’s dairy cows had grazed just across the road from the Cooper beef cattle. He and Noelle had played along Willow Creek, which followed the curve of the land until it reached Table Rock Lake, a little over two miles away.